Democrat Congressional Candidate Madrid Impedes Federal Investigation?
Our buddy Chris has the details. New Mexico is up to its ears in this scandal, and it directly impacts a huge congresssional election. Read it all and pass it on!
It's getting off that can be a bit tricky, as even a darling of the netkooks finds out:
Boxer was clearly among friends at YearlyKos. She got a standing ovation when she mentioned her consistent opposition to the Iraq war and enthusiastic applause when she bashed the idea of a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
But she also found herself having to tiptoe around ideological land mines, such as parrying a question from the audience demanding to know why the Democrats hadn't pushed to impeach President Bush.
In interviews afterward, Boxer was grilled about her support for Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has been pilloried by many on the left for his pro-Iraq War stance. Liberal bloggers have been raising money for Lieberman's primary opponent, an anti-war Democratic businessman.
Get it? You can be "right" on nine points, but if you don't go along with the kooks on the tenth, you'll be pilloried.
For another example, consider this post over at Booman Tribune (strong language) on Armando, the Daily Kos front page diarist who was recently outed by National Review (or was he?). Because the issue of the day was RFK Jr's ridiculous Rolling Stone interview, Armando got savaged because he didn't go along with the Sore Loserman routine from Kennedy. Now remember, Armando is one of the stars of the liberal blogosphere, but he recognized that Kennedy's article was a bunch of hooey and as a result he's getting castigated.
Reading the comments on that post, you can tell that there's a tendency for the bigger liberal bloggers to try to tone down the silly stuff. And you can also tell that there's no interest in going along with that effort from the readers. In other words, Armando and Kos themselves are now trapped atop the tiger.
In recent weeks, American officials say, they had begun following a man who they believed could lead them directly to Mr. Zarqawi: his "spiritual adviser," Sheik Abd al-Rahman. A member of Mr. Zarqawi's network, captured by the Americans, had told them the sheik was Mr. Zarqawi's most trusted adviser.
Some weeks ago, American officials said, they began tracking Mr. Rahman with a remotely piloted aircraft, hoping he would lead them to their quarry.
And is it just me or does the military seem overly interested in letting the world know that they got him with inside help?
"We have a guy on the inside who led us directly to Zarqawi," the official said.
In a news release on Thursday morning, American military commanders hinted strongly that a member of Mr. Zarqawi's inner circle had pointed the way. "Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi," the release said.
Iraqi officials confirmed that Mr. Zarqawi had indeed been sold out by one of his own.
"We have managed to infiltrate this organization," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser. He declined to elaborate.
One hopes that Zarqawi's buddies are all sitting in tight quarters looking at each other with distrust.
Not only did Sarah Knopp come close to forcing O'Connell into a statewide fall runoff, but she got more votes than any Green Party member has ever gotten in a California election — in fact, party officials said, more than any Green has ever gotten in any statewide race in the country.
Note the careful wording: Knopp was not a Green Party candidate, any more than O'Connell, a Democrat, was his party's candidate, because the superintendent's post is officially nonpartisan. Still, Green Party officials were exulting over her strong showing — she received 569,000 votes, or 17% of the total — and talking about her as a big part of the party's future.
Byron York infiltrates the Kossacks in Las Vegas, and highlights something that I've been talking about here for awhile; the tendency for the liberal blogosphere to think they've won when they beat other Democrats. Or even when they don't:
From that modest beginning, according to Moulitsas’s storyline, came triumph just one year later. “2003 was the year of Howard Dean,” Moulitsas said, “where an unknown governor from a small, remote, and usually forgotten state was propelled to front-runner status on the strength of people power.”
Then came a setback. “2004,” said Moulitsas, “yeah, let’s not talk about 2004.” But after that, another triumph. “2005 was the year we helped Howard Dean become DNC chairman. We also helped Paul Hackett prove that a strong unapologetic progressive voice could compete in a blood-red conservative district.”
The odd thing was that Moulitsas’s victories weren’t actually victories. 2003 might have been the year of candidate Howard Dean, but 2004 was the year in which the Democratic presidential nominee was actually chosen—and Dean lost. And while 2005 was indeed the year Dean ascended to the top of the DNC, it would be a mistake to attribute his victory mostly to Moulitsas’s influence. And Paul Hackett, a Moulitsas favorite who ran for a seat in the House from Ohio in 2005—well, he lost. And so did more than a dozen other candidates who ran with Moulitsas’s support.
What’s more, some of them lost in part because they said the kind of things that bring cheers on the DailyKos but that turn off many voters. Hackett not only called President Bush a “chickenhawk,” he also said—echoing earlier statements by Moulitsas himself—that “the Republican party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren’t a whole lot different from Osama bin Laden.” Voters thought he was a bit over the top—just like some of the bloggers who supported him.
Kos was on with Sam Seder on Air America Radio last night as I was driving home, and was consumed with triumphalism over the nomination of Jon Tester. The funny thing is that the more he went on and on about how they beat the DLC candidate, the more I realized that they kayoed the guy who had a chance to defeat Senator Conrad Burns in November. The DLC candidate was the son of a former governor, an attorney with great name recognition and contacts in the state, while Tester's an organic farmer.
Our buddy Mr Ugly American sugggested that we check out this post by an Iraqi journalist who opposed the war but who is also very happy at the death of Zarqawi:
We held our breath for a second and then a loud “Mabrook” [Congratulations] was said by one of the radio stations reporters. Few minutes later, journalists started congratulating each other. Some danced in the hall, female journalists halulated, and others rushed to call their offices of the braking news. The news of his death made up our day.
I called the office immediately to confirm to them the rumor that was spread. After I hang up, a flashback of images of people died in the terrorists attacks came to my mind. Um Bashar, whom we all miss, was among the pictures. She was all dressed in white smiling as if she was telling me. “I can rest now, B. tell Bashar that I am comfortable now.” Then she disappeared but the other images did not.
I remembered my mother’s cries and voice when I called her after a car bomb exploded in front of the school where she used to teach. I recalled the TV images of the burnt children and their parents in the middle of a huge flame.
I know that attacks will increase. I know more people are going to die. I know mistakes are going to be continued. I know everything will not be fixed soon like in the fairy tales. But I am happy that this man is killed. I believe his death is the real first step: the thousand-miles road starts with one step.
Terrific post. Mr Ugly American has his own thoughts on this post as well.
Couldn't update my page there for a couple of hours, but I didn't want to forget to congratulate the men and women of Centcom whose hard work paid off last night with the death of Zarqawi:
Not everybody's happy. Liberal moonbat Michael Berg, whose son Nick Berg was beheaded personally by Zarqawi according to some reports, is saddened.
MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.
I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.
Apparently they were being watched closely, but they were also far advanced in their planning:
According to the documents, the group is alleged to have been well-advanced on its plan to attack a number of Canadian institutions, possibly including the Houses of Parliament, the RCMP and the CBC.
The documents repeat what was reported earlier this week, that the plotters hoped to take federal politicians in Ottawa hostage, and demand both the withdrawal of Canadian forces from Afghanistan and the release of some prisoners in Canadian jails.
And yes, the terrorists do know the safe places to check the web:
To obtain the ammonium nitrate, Amara searched for suppliers on the internet, using the facilities of a public library, the documents say. Since ammonium nitrate is difficult to get, the group allegedly hatched the plan to buy a farm as a cover for obtaining the fertilizer. (boldface added)
Liberal bloggers are up in arms about a post over at the Media Blog on National Review, which "outs" Daily Kos front page diarist Armando as attorney Armando Lloréns-Sar. Embarrassingly for Llorens-Sar, the law firm where he is a partner has reportedly handled many cases for large corporate clients including Wal-Mart.
A major Right wing site has chosen to support a troll's campaign started at this site to out me.
The writing is on the wall. I will likely be giving up blogging as a result.
If people were wondering about why I was so adamant about this, I hope this explains it.
I have never written about my clients and whenever I had a conflict, I disclosed it. But people of ill will have no decency or limits.
If I sound bitter, it is because I am quite bitter about this.
So, this is probably so long kossacks and bloggers. I fade away.
I decided early on that as tempting as anonymity is, it's also an invitation to people to start digging. Plus, as it happens, my clients are aware of my politics.
I certainly will not miss Armando. As I like to say, he's a little prickly at times and at times you can remove the "ly" from that description. He's recently kicked a few conservative bloggers off a bipartisan blog he founded, largely, I suspect, because they were kicking his butt.
Especially check the comments on this post, where Armando comes across like Captain Queeg muttering about the strawberries:
Please go on Tall Dave.
I am not buying it.
You write like Hugh Hewitt.
Here’s a test for you.
Write a post on the choice issue. Then write a post on the drug war issue. Then write one on the minimum wage issue.
Explain in detail why the Republicans are extreme and wrong on each of these.
Write those before you write anything else here.
Your disagreement is not the issue Dave. Trevino and I disagree on EVERYTHING.
It is your credibility. Frankly, it is your honesty, or lack thereof.
I have found you to NOT be honest.
I have found you to be Hugh Hewitt Jr.
Write like Hewitt and I will treat you like Hewitt.
You are clearly a Republican at heart. And your pretense that you are not is laughable.
You spew GOP talking points like water.
By the way, I hate people who capitalize words for emphasis; it's a sign of weak writing skills.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, was killed Wednesday evening by an airstrike northwest of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born high-school dropout whose leadership of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq made him the most wanted man in the country, was killed along with seven aides near the city of Baqubah, the officials said.
This is great news for the US and better news for Iraq. Zarqawi qualified as one of the most evil people on earth, and his passing will make it easier to quell the insurgency.
Countdown to liberal bloggers finding the timing of this curious: 3,2,1....
Update: Most of the liberal bloggers have been fairly sensible on this. But some of their commenters are not:
Bush propagandists set this guy up as second on the ladder of evil to You Know Who By the Way Where Is He Anyway? so they could make a big deal out of getting him if they ever managed to do that and give a temporary boost to Junior's ratings. He never has been nearly so important in the Iraqi resistance as the propaganda ministry wanted everyone to think he was.
CBS News reported Monday that government officials are now predicting a major terror attack in the US "sometime in the next 6 months." Say, isn't there an election in about 6 months? Right on time.
Comment by Farinata X — 6/8/2006 @ 9:20 am
Watch the MSM turn this into V-J Day, the Santino 'Sonny' Corleone wipout, and the conclusion of American Idol combined.
Keeping a daily chart of US fatalities in the Iraq quagmire tends to make one suspicious of celebratory "turning points".
It is, of course, nice to see a thug taken out, but I doubt it'll have any noticeable effect on the flow of events, except in shallow and fleeting perception of the MSM.
Comment by Ed Stephan — 6/8/2006 @ 9:24 am
I'm sure Ed gets a great deal of pleasure from his daily chart of US fatalities.
Move over Bud. College life isn't just about drinking beer. In a rare instance, Apple Computer Inc.'s iconic iPod music player surpassed beer drinking as the most "in" thing among undergraduate college students, according to the latest biannual market research study by Ridgewood, N.J.-based Student Monitor.
Brian Bilbray ran to the left of Francine Busby. I know it sounds weird, but he did. That he won on a progressive platform is biggest story of the night. Busby's loss was a loss no matter how it's spun, but it's also a clear sign that the Democrats must become a progressive party. Busby ran the ultimate DC campaign, downplaying ideology and party, and making the campaign about competence, corruption, and issues. I don't expect this to wake up DC insiders, but you never know.
Stoller's something of a nut; lord knows he must have some incriminating photos of Jerome Armstrong, or I can't imagine he'd be posting over there on the front page. He's got all the charm, wit and sophistication of a 17-year-old who's drunk for the first time.
Bilbray knew that progressive messaging was the key to holding the seat. Busby bought the DC insider line that elections are about 'issues' unconnected to any larger narrative. Americans are mad about high gas prices therefore they will vote for Democrats. She ran against principles, against values, and against the base. She ran against the blogs, not in the sense that she bashed the blogs but in the sense that her message and our message did not overlap (unlike Hackett). Her message was 'look at these bullet points'.
I'm tempted to look at yesterday's posts and see if Stoller was quite so free with his criticism when he hoped Busby might win. But you know how it is; who cares if Matt Stoller is two-faced?
An awful lot of liberals are looking at populist victories in the Democratic primaries and high-fiving as if these populists had beaten Republicans instead of moderate Democrats. Taylor Marsh sounds positively giddy:
Jon Tester’s big win shows Democrats the way through, which means it’s time for politicians to find his or her own inner Schweitzer.
The lessons for last night through my eyes were that if Republicans spend big money they can win, turn out is still likely to be low, but if the politician stands up, the outsider can get in. But that will only happen if the person shows some authenticity and has the spine to let the voters know they actually do have a choice and it’s not between a Joe Lieberman Democrat and some brand name Republican. Get it?
Hmmm, I thought Marsh was a better writer; that's pretty lame. Jon Tester, for all of you including me who'd never heard his name until today, is the Democratic candidate to unseat Montana Senator Conrad Burns. Tester's platform seems to revolve around Jack Abramoff, but that's already getting to be very old news and it won't get any fresher in the next couple months.
I suspect Tester's about to become the next darling of the Netkooks. Can you say 0-22?
Asked about Internet stories that "lack veracity" but which serve as news. Smith replies, "Swift Boats," as if the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had been engaged not in getting out the truth about John Kerry's military career and dubious war crimes charges, but in smearing the Democratic Senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate.
Let me remind people that I spent more time investigating John Kerry and the Swiftees in 2004 than all but about five people on the planet (and Shepard Smith isn't one of them), and that I could never find a single case where the Swiftees lacked veracity, but I certainly found many where Kerry's claims had that problem.
The arrest of 17 suspects, many of them teenagers, picked up in the suburbs of Toronto at the weekend is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist nexus that, worryingly, has its links with one of the world’s most wanted men — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
On his website al-Zarqawi has encouraged young Muslims to take up the fight in their own countries and spread his religious war further than Iraq and Afghanistan.
One aim is to create an army of “white-skinned” militants, men born in Europe and America who can convert to Islam and become harder for the authorities to detect as they cross the world on their missions, including suicide attacks. Using skilled computer operators around the world, al-Zarqawi’s outfit passes on bombmaking manuals, advice on how to sustain terror cells and even ways to use credit card fraud to hack into vital internet sites.
Also as predicted, suddenly the media are less interested in this race. NewsBusters notes that Matt Lauer gushed over Francine Busby yesterday, but couldn't spare a few moments to give us an update today. Liberal bloggers have already worked out the spin; this was a Republican district and nothing they could do was going to change that. Funny how the liberal bloggers only say that after the election.
Chris Bowers notes that Busby did a lot better this time around. No fooling, Sherlock! She wasn't facing an incumbent this time around. She did no better than the liberal/left presidential candidates have done in that district, as John McIntyre noted yesterday. And this comment of Bowers' is just delusional:
No matter what the media says, no Democrat should be mistaken about this result. First, this is a huge, seismic shift in our favor that bodes extremely well for November. If we receive an 18% shift nationwide, we will win the House easily. If Republican candidates are pulling only 20% of the independent vote, the Indycrat realignment is still on.
But of course the media will only hear it if the message is negative for the Republicans. I flew up to Vegas for work today, and USA Today had an article about how this election could be a bellwether for the 2006 general election. Then, while I was waiting to catch the return flight, I saw CBS News' Bob Schieffer making the same point. But if (as I expect) Republican Brian Bilbray wins, there will be no stories tomorrow about how apparently the electorate is not punishing Republicans for President Bush's missteps. Instead, we will be assured that Busby would have won had it not been for her mistake in telling illegal immigrants that they could work on her campaign.
BTW, this would make Kos' record 0-21. Bob Shrum must love this guy; Kos makes his record look pretty good.
I was pleased that the intro to my segment on the Allman & Smash show was a brief discussion by Jamie Allman on the history of this day, one of the most significant dates in world history, and as I said on the show, the most difficult task man has ever accomplished.
Utah. Gold. Sword. Juno. And of course Omaha. The five beaches where the allies landed and established control, at a terrifying cost, one that it's hard to believe today's media and today's "peace" movement would accept.
Wikipedia has a good page on D-Day and an even better one on the Battle for Normandy. Did you know that German intelligence knew that the invasion was coming that morning, but their warnings were ignored because they had issued similar warnings a month earlier, when the invasion was initially scheduled but was scotched by bad weather?
Gore Pulls Out ... of Kosistan: The striking thing about Al Gore's appearance on ABC's "This Week" program Sunday was that he did not call for any sort of deadline-driven withdrawal from Iraq. Quite the opposite--he was careful to emphasize the potential of a pullout to make the situation worse. From ABC:
"I would pursue the twin objectives of trying to withdraw our forces as quickly as we possibly can, while at the same time minimizing the risk that we'll make the mess over there even worse and raise even higher the danger of civil war," Gore said.
Dismissing calls for any deadline, Gore added, "It's possible that setting a deadline could set in motion forces that would make it even worse. I think that we should analyze that very carefully. My guess is that a deadline is probably not the right approach.
This is of course very disappointing to the antiwar Left, who have been hopping around like little boys doing the peepee dance, praying for release. The tough thing is to work out the political calculations on this. Is Gore thinking he can finesse the Left by blasting Bush, yet refusing to attack him on their favorite issue?
This is all chess on a board where the moves won't be obvious for another 18 months. Politically it would appear Gore's made a short-term mistake; Hillary's not letting anybody get to the right of her on this war. She knows she's going to take some lumps over that, but she's willing to take them if it will help her in the general election.
But while it's a thumb in the eye to the Kossacks, it also appears to be pretty good politics longer term on further reflection. My best guess is that Gore's decided to go for the "electable" label. It worked for John Kerry in 2004, and Gore's got a heck of a lot better case than Le Fraude; he's already won the popular vote once and he's (arguably) from the South. And I suspect that despite the passion over Iraq right now, it's not going to turn into another Vietnam and the continuing attempt to apply that template is silly.
I've had my money on Hillary for the 2008 Democratic nominee for awhile. Gore's been flaky enough that I'm still not entirely convinced that he's running. And there's always the possibility that the activists will become enamored enough with a Russ Feingold candidacy that catches fire.
Gore's put himself in a good spot. The net effect if he does run is that Hillary's boxed in. She can't tack any further right and she's unable to win supporters on the Left among the true believers. She will find herself, like all Senators running for president, forced to defend a myriad of votes. Gore can limit himself to potshots against President Bush anytime he needs a boost among the moonbats.
I'll be on with my buddies Allman & Smash in the Morning on FM 97.1 St Louis for a 10-minute segment tomorrow starting around 8:10 AM Eastern, 7:10 Central. If you're not in the St. Louis area, you can listen in here.
That's certainly what the media will be claiming tomorrow if Democrat Francine Busby wins a runoff in the special election to serve out the remainder of Duke Cunningham's term. Busby came close to winning outright in a crowded primary, but now she faces a former congressman in Brian Bilbray. Busby was seen as having a chance in this race, but she made a huge gaffe last week:
Speaking to a largely Hispanic audience last Thursday, Busby faced a Spanish-speaking questioner who said he wanted to help her campaign but lacked voting papers. The question was translated into English and she responded, "Everybody can help. You can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."
Busby's GOP rival, Brian Bilbray, criticized the Democrat, saying she was encouraging possible illegal immigrants to volunteer for the campaign. On Monday, the GOP launched a radio ad that said, "That's right. Francine Busby says you don't need papers to vote."
Digging a little deeper on the Toronto story this afternoon. The terrorists reportedly were looking at high-profile targets, including the CN Building, certainly the most distinctive building on the Toronto skyline. I can't seem to upload a photo right now, but it's very similar to the Space Needle in Seattle.
"Targets of the alleged plot included political and economic symbols such as the Parliament Buildings and Peace Tower in Ottawa, along with the CN Tower and Toronto Stock Exchange," the Globe and Mail newspaper said.
As with the British suspects last summer's subway attacks, there is one mosque that seems to tie many of the plotters together:
Several of the suspects attended the same mosque in a Toronto suburb where a local parliamentarian had complained in the past about the radical views held by some worshipers.
Predictably, there are some for whom the real concern is for hate crimes against Muslims:
Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said he's already ordered increased patrols and enforcement for local mosques and schools that might be similarly targeted.
"I am concerned that some misinformed fools would go out and cause damage," Blair said.
"There are always uninformed and ignorant idiots who go out and try to express some anger and misdirect it at totally innocent people.
"Any anger directed toward the greater Muslim community in Toronto would be totally misdirected and based on ignorance of what has transpired here."
I don't know about "totally" misdirected. That's not to say that the vandals in this case are right, because they're not.
Tom Lipscomb did some of the best reporting on John Fraude Kerry in the 2004 presidential race, including breaking the story that Kerry had participated in a 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which the assassination of US senators was proposed and debated.
He returns today with a piece dissecting the week earlier article in the New York Times on Le Fraude's continuing efforts to resuscitate his ridiculous Christmas in Cambodia tale (among other stories).
Zernike appears to have made no effort to look at any record besides listing Kerry's latest assertions with obligatory quotes from the usual Swiftie suspects to provide "balance." She doesn't appear to be aware of the hilarious inconsistency of the Kerry hat story she recites dutifully as if this was the very first time the hat had appeared in print. As the clips should have shown her, Kerry first pulled the famous hat out of a "secret compartment" for Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld's feature story in 2003. "My good luck hat," Kerry told Blumenfeld, "given to me by a CIA guy." Now he tells Zernike a "special operations team" member gave it to him on a secret "mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals" in February.
Lipscomb points out that the Times publishes Kerry's statements as fact, while doing their best to paint the Swiftees as partisans:
Zernike wastes most of her story simply repeating rather than weighing Kerry talking points: She defines John O'Neill as "a former Swift boat commander who was recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show." That is a pretty dramatic charge by The New York Times. But the extensive record Zernike apparently missed, including the Times's own archives, shows it is totally untrue. If O'Neill was recruited by anyone for the Cavett Show, it was Bruce Kesler, a Marine veteran whose op-ed O'Neill had come across in the Times and whose "Vietnam Veterans for A Just Peace" O'Neill quickly joined.
Kesler nominated O'Neill for the show. In the CSPAN rebroadcast of the original 1971 Cavett debate during the 2004 campaign, Dick Cavett, who had been on the famous Nixon "enemies list," denied the Nixon Administration had anything to do with setting up the debate or who participated. During the election Kesler gave the entire story to Todd Purdum, but nothing appeared in the Times. Kesler also outlined how the debate had come about in a commentary piece in the Augusta Free Press in August of 2004. And the Kesler challenge for Kerry to debate was carried in the June 2, 1971 New York Times.
If The New York Times fails to correct that error, O'Neill could have a pretty good libel action. How can there be "absence of malice" when a great newspaper repeatedly lists claims by eyewitnesses backed by military records as "unsubstantiated," while its reporter ignores published records including its own archive?
But there's some good news in here as well (just not for Nuancy Boy):
In any case, it is time for some tough reporting to evaluate the Kerry's claims as listed in Zernike's article. I will be following up with several other key incidents which appear to be widely at variance with these claims. These will include what appears to be the current state of the evidence about the "skimmer" operation Kerry has decided to put in play again and the greatest newspaper coverup in modern history.
It is time we all got to see a picture of the famous Kerry "lucky hat," rather than another account by the latest star-struck journalist. It is time for Kerry to stop alluding to "records" and start producing them. And it is time media assigned reporters with military experience or the resources to analyze this record and see just who is lying about what.
I believe this is the hat in question:
Found it over at Ace's. There's another picture around of Kerry wearing the hat stateside. Anybody got a link?
Kerry was accused of shooting himself to get the purple hearts; of having political plans even at that young age that fueled a cynical plot to get medals any way he could; of fabricating, lying about and exaggerating his military experiences. The tactic worked; people began to think maybe Kerry was "Unfit for Command," the title of an anti-Kerry book. Eventually, and bizarrely, people were arguing about whether Kerry took his boat into Cambodia on one occasion. To us the story sounded quite plausible (a number of Americans made clandestine trips into Cambodia during that time), as well as irrelevant to the campaign.
First, nobody accused Kerry of shooting himself; the claim was that the wounds in two of the cases were self-inflicted. In the first Purple Heart incident, Kerry reportedly fired a rocket launcher too close to shore and was hit by a small fragment of shrapnel. In the third one, Kerry was wounded in the buttocks when he tried to blow up a mound of rice. Brinkley himself confirms the injury.
Second, the Christmas in Cambodia story was relevant only to the extent that it went to the heart of Kerry's willingness to tell a lie for political advantage. And I'm not surprised it sounded plausible to the editorial staff of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; the question is whether it's plausible to people who actually served in Vietnam and know the terrain.
Police and intelligence officials made the arrests late Friday night and early Saturday morning after the group accepted delivery of three tons of ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer than can be explosive if combined with fuel oil.
The same type of fertilizer was used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. In that explosion, one ton of ammonium nitrate was used to make the bomb.
Michelle Malkin notes a rather bizarre claim that the terrorists came from a broad strata of Canadian society.
The 12 adult suspects, again:
1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto; 2. Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ont.; 3. Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga; 4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga; 5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga; 6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ont.; 7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston; 8. Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto; 9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto; 10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto; 11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga; 12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga.
Such a diverse lot! A veritable Benetton ad. Can't think of a similarity among them!
Allah notes that they don't fit the liberal profile of a terrorist: poor and desperate. This is something I've noticed many times over the years. Few of America's homegrown terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, like the Weather Underground, for example, were drawn from bleak circumstances; instead it seemed far more likely that they would be from the upper and upper middle classes--the classes that have the leisure time to discuss "revolution".
Bolivia's left-wing President, Evo Morales, has taken the first step towards giving a fifth of the country's land to poor farmers, handing over about 30,000sqkm of territory amid threats by angry large landowners to form private defence groups.
Mr Morales chose the eastern city of Santa Cruz, the landowners' powerbase in Bolivia's agricultural heartland, to award 60 titles to 3.1 million hectares of former state land to some of the poor peasants who support him.
So 60 people get 30,000 square kilometers of land, or about 500 square kilometers apiece? Can we say the obvious here, that this is crony socialism that will work about as well as it has in Zimbabwe? Look forward to stories about people starving because there is no food growing in Bolivia.
Sen. Russ Feingold told party faithful here yesterday that Democrats must shake their "timid" image and could best demonstrate they have a backbone by joining his call to censure President Bush.
If Democrats fail to stand up for what they believe in, it won't matter if they win back control of Congress, Mr. Feingold said, noting that the party held the majority when the Senate approved the Iraq war and passed the USA Patriot Act.
The interesting thing is that despite being the darling of the Netkooks, he's not getting any respect at all from the punters at Tradesports, where his candidacy is seen as a decided longshot. His nomination is currently priced at 2.1 bid, 3.1 ask, ranking him seventh to Hillary, Warner, Gore, Edwards, Kerry and Biden. When I pointed this out a couple of months ago, one of the liberal bloggers said that he was going to put some money on Feingold since his shares seemed undervalued. Let's hope he didn't do it, because Feingold preferred was running at about 5.0 back then.
...if you're one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that's not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness. Anyone who supports the launching of a war should be clear-sighted enough to know that, when the troops go in, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, torture prisoners. It happens in every war in human history, even the good ones. Individual Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians did bad things in World War II and World War I. These aren't stunning surprises, they're inevitable: It might be a bombed mosque or a gunned-down pregnant woman or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something. And, in the scales of history, it makes no difference to the justice of the cause and the need for victory.
